This provided for the evacuation of Bulgaria by the invading armies, and also for a division of the conquered territory. Bulgaria gained the largest amount of territory, though less than she had claimed. Greece retained the important seaport of Salonica, the possession of which had been hotly disputed, and gained the largest sea front. Montenegro, though deprived of the much-coveted Scutari, was assigned part of northern Albania and the Turkish sanjak of Novibazar, adjoining on the east, considerably increasing her diminutive territory.
Servia had most reason to be dissatisfied with the result, in view of her craving for an opening to the sea. Cut off by Albania on the west, it sought an opening on the south, demanding the city of Kavala, on the Aegean Sea. But to this Greece strongly objected, as that city, one of the great tobacco marts of the world, was inhabited almost wholly by Greeks. Servia, however, extended southward far over its old territory, gaining Uskub, its old capital. And the Powers also agreed that it should have commercial rights on the Mediterranean, thorough railroad connection with Salonica.
As regards Turkey’s shrewd advantage of the opportunity to retake Adrianople, it proved a successful move. The Russian press strongly advocated that the Turks should be ejected, but the jealousy of the Powers prevented any agreement as to who should do this and in the end the Turks remained, with a considerable widening of the tract of land before assigned to them.
In these wars it is estimated that 358,000 persons died, and that the cost of the two wars, to the several nations involved, reached a total of $1,200,000,000. Its general result was almost to complete the work of expelling the Turks from Europe, the territory lost by them being divided up between the several Balkan nations.
Chapter XIX.
METHODS IN MODERN WARFARE
Ancient and Modern Weapons—New Types of Weapons—The Iron-clad Warship—The Balloon in War—Tennyson’s Foresight—Gunning for Airships—The Submarine—Under-water Warfare—The New Type of Battleship—Mobilization—The Waste of War
One hundred years ago the Battle of Waterloo had just been fought and Napoleon’s star had set never to rise again. For years he had swept Europe with his armies, rending the nations into fragments, and winning world-famous victories with weapons that no one would look for today except in a military museum, weapons antiquated beyond all possible utility on a modern field of battle.
ANCIENT AND MODERN WEAPONS
Every fresh modern war has been fought with new weapons, and during the past century there have been countless inventions for the carrying on of warfare in a more destructive manner, apparently on the philanthropic theory that war should be made so terrible that it must quickly pass away.
But it has happened that as soon as a particularly horrible contrivance was invented and introduced into armies and navies, other inventors immediately set themselves to offset and discount its probable effect. Consequently war not only has not passed away, but we have it with us in more frightful form that ever before. Thus it is that each big war, after being heralded as the world’s last conflagration, has proved but the herald of another war, bigger and more death-dealing still.